family photos,Värttinä, new postcards

The picture above is of my sister and my brother, years ago. I've been gradually taking our childhood albums and scanning them into digital format.

I know photos mean different things to different people. Some take photos for art's sake or to record an event, some focus on technical perfection, and some aren't interested in taking photos at all.

Since childhood, I've taken photos to capture moments and people. I know I'll never win photo awards...for me, the technical and compositional aspects aren't as important as trying to find the essence of the photo's subject, whether landscape or person or atmosphere. I have a long way to go, but every so often I manage to take a photo which I feel comes tantalizingly close. People have always been more interesting to me as photo subjects than landscapes.

SURVEY: Do you have a camera? How often do you use it?

I had mentioned before that the Lord of the Rings musical (and comments from Hitch in LJ) inspired me to buy a CD by the Finnish group Värttinä. I chose Värttinä's "Iki" CD because it seemed to have music closest to the LOTR show (at least of the CDs available in the Canadian iTunes) and I love it:



I've been listening to this CD over and over and over and over again. Such incredibly gorgeous harmonies and instrumentals. It's also great music to work to since I can't understand any of the words. :-) You can hear sample sounclips here.

Thanks to Julie, "Lord Korak" and John for the postcards for my collection! You can see my whole collection here, but here are my newest additions:



From Julie:

GREETINGS FROM INTERCOURSE, PENNSYLVANIA
A horse and buggy travels down the busy streets of Intercourse.

"Hi Debbie

Thought you might enjoy this classy offering from the heart of Amish country (& yes, there really is such a town)

Love Julie"



From John Hall:

Views of Abu Dhabi - The Capital

"Debbie,

Greetings from Abu Dhabi in the UAE

John"



From my pal "Lord Korak" (who might be attending FilKONtario, his very first filk con!). Here's what was on the other side:

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Illustration Friday: "Tea"

The drawing above is for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Tea."

For those of you not familiar with Illustration Friday, here's the intro from the site: "Illustration Friday is meant to challenge participants creatively. We believe that every person has a little creative bone in their body. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It's a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art. Curious about collage? Try it here. Never even picked up a colored pencil? Why not now? Just have time for a doodle? That's okay, we'd love to see it. You don't have to be an illustrator or an artist to participate. Just pick up a pencil, for the love of pete."

I have fun participating, and also enjoy looking what other people come up with, especially for topics that can be interpreted many different ways. Here a few of the other drawings I've done for Illustration Friday:

"Ancient"


"Sorrow"


"Friendship"


"Fragile"

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Session sketches, Wendy Cope interview

I took my sketchbook to the Tranzac last night. I've been doing this for the past couple of sessions. I was way self-conscious about it at first, but people don't seem to mind and I try my best to be unobtrusive.

Sat beside a fiddle player named Sophie last night who normally goes to McCarthy's Irish Pub on Monday nights. My whistle teacher has suggested that I go to other Irish music sessions sometimes, at least just to listen, so I've been investigating the other Toronto sessions. Here are the ones I've found so far, mostly through Toronto Celtic Music Pages and SiegelProductions.ca:



Tranzac: The one I already attend.

McCarthy's Irish Pub: 1801 Gerrard St. Sophie mentioned Monday nights, but online schedules seem to list Wednesday nights. I'm hoping Sophie's right, else these sessions could conflict with the ones at the Tranzac.

The Victory Cafe, 581 Markham, south of Bloor (just Southwest of the Bathurst Subway station. This list says the sessions are on Thursday nights, but that they sometimes don't start until 10 pm. (!!)

Dora Keogh's, 141 Danforth, east of Broadview, Sunday, 4 p.m. as well as Thursday nights starting around 9:30 p.m. "This is apparently the red hot Irish session to attend if you can keep up. Usually hosted by flute player Pat O'Gorman and fiddler Jim McGee."

The Foggy Dew, corner of King and Niagara, 2- 6 p.m. Sunday. "At this point, the pace is middling to almost fast, but beginners are definitely welcome. Singing is also encouraged."

If you're in Toronto and know of others, please do let me know.

It's good practice for me, drawing from life, and it's also a challenge since the players are all constantly moving and changing positions. It's a good challenge, and forces me to push myself to learn some new skills. I also have a tendency to stick to head shots (shoulders and up)...I need to practise doing full body shots, though this is hard with a live subject unless they're very patient and posing on purpose.

I'm starting to purposely choose angles that are difficult to draw, like the one below, which I digitally coloured after scanning. Frances is actually playing a flute held horizontally, but it looks like she's playing a penny whistle here; I think I needed to make her right hand bigger. I still need to work on my perspective skills. I'm reading books on the subject but I'm realizing that the most important thing I need is PRACTICE. So I try to do some drawing every day.



From music to poetry....

About three years ago, I Blathered about a stranger in a bookstore introducing me to Wendy Cope's poetry.

Well, I loved her Serious Concerns (one of my all-time favourite poetry collections) and decided to see if she'd be willing to be interviewed for PoetryFAQ.com. I wrote to her rep at Faber, half-expecting never to get a response. Within a 24 hour time period, he had sent me her e-mail address, Wendy and I had exchanged several e-mails, and I had posted her interview on PoetryFAQ.com.

I love the Internet. Wendy was a wonderful interviewee.

Wish I could find that bookstore stranger again somehow, to thank him.

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AppleMail vs Eudora

Will Write For Chocolate strip and column have been updated. This week's column: "Finding Time To Write (Even If You Have Kids)."

Thanks so much to those who posted advice yesterday about my frustrating e-mail woes. Jeff did check to see whether the missing mail was hiding in some hidden folder but wasn't able to find anything. And no, I hadn't done a recent backup. :-(

Turns out I also lost ALL MY OUTGOING MAIL FOR 2005, but fortunately there -is- a backup since then.

Sigh.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've switched from Eudora to Apple Mail. So far, I love Apple Mail. Nice user interface, easy to use.

Things I like better about Eudora so far

I can associate specific .signatures with specific e-mail addresses.

Things I like better about Apple Mail so far

It hasn't eaten any of my e-mail yet.

Conversation threading option.

Nicer-looking interface.

The addresses are hooked up with my Mac Address Book.

In addition to regular mailboxes, you can have "Smart" mailboxes, which work similarly to Gmail's mailboxes but are much better because you can specify the filter rules.

You can tell by just looking at the mailboxes how many unread e-mails you have in that mailbox folder. I find this especially handy since I was very bad in Eudora about filtering messages into mailboxes...as a result, e-mails would pile up in my main Inbox.

The user pics. I mocked Jeff for liking this feature but now I'm totally into it, pasting my favourite photos of people into their Address Book entry. When their e-mails come in, I see their face (or whatever I choose to represent that person) in the header field. Sounds frivolous, I know, but I find it makes the e-mail experience a little more personal.

More on this in a future Blathering after I've had a chance to use AppleMail some more and have sorted out the chaos that is currently my e-mail.

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E-mail woes

Eudora seems to have eaten all the e-mails I received (to my inkygirl.com and electricpenguin.com accounts) between Feb.7th through until Monday morning. If you sent me e-mail during that time period and still have not received a reply, I would greatly appreciate you re-sending.

Eudora also ate all the e-mails I SENT between Feb. 14th and this morning.

As you might imagine, I am not a happy camper right now.

If anyone has used Eudora for the Mac before and experienced a similar problem, I would greatly appreciate (understatement of the year) any advice.

Because this is not the first time Eudora has gone quirky on me, I have decided to finally switch to AppleMail with the help of my technonerdboy husband. I will be starting from scratch, building up my address books and filters/rules, as well as learning a new application. And trying to piece together what urgent e-mails have disappeared, what needs to be answered, etc.

Thanks for your patience during this transition.

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